On May 10 2019 06:20 Duvon wrote:It's not like melee is weak. It just isn't as strong.

In general it is pretty weak. It is just that there are a few skills and builds that are very strong. Kind of like how spellcasting seemed stronger that it really was before last series of buffs because of Blade Vortex and couple of other strong spells.

When you can pick up a random melee skill (like Cleave) and do a build that can do T16/Guardians/Bosses without needing to put 20ex into it and have a specific ascendancy then we can talk about how melee is OK.

Most of the shit melee skills have strictly better versions at this point or are glorified auto attack. GGG could straight up remove cleave from the game and nothing of value would be lost because reave is just better.

On May 09 2019 21:40 ramon wrote:accidentally left the guild instead of a party... i would like to rejoin: consecratedmypants

I added you

I think at this point, melee in trade league is fine tbh, most gear is cheaper. You can get started with a voidforge or atziri's disfavour that is stupid cheap. Can also try to make the broken synthesis weapons if you want, but it would probably be too hard to trade when flashback comes out

Didn't even consider going 2h, I saved up on abyss items / abyss jewels to go for spec throw if I manage to find a Paradoxica or Shroud anyways(which didn't happen of course :p) so I just bought them for 150c overall in trade league.

Looking at it a 6l Voidforge + Kaom's is not that expensive and I could go make an Elementalist or Trickster with it...hmm...

On May 10 2019 22:18 ThaddeusK wrote:Most of the shit melee skills have strictly better versions at this point or are glorified auto attack. GGG could straight up remove cleave from the game and nothing of value would be lost because reave is just better.

Not for me. Reave asks you to rush between packs to keep better AoE, I hate that. Any skill that forces you to rush packs for it to work is a shit skill for me.

On May 10 2019 22:18 ThaddeusK wrote:Most of the shit melee skills have strictly better versions at this point or are glorified auto attack. GGG could straight up remove cleave from the game and nothing of value would be lost because reave is just better.

Not for me. Reave asks you to rush between packs to keep better AoE, I hate that. Any skill that forces you to rush packs for it to work is a shit skill for me.

QFT. I hate Reave so much. Cleave is quite okay, I loved it back in the days but it has too little AoE these days (compared to other stuff). Still is pretty decent for safety with the fortify.

On May 10 2019 22:18 ThaddeusK wrote:Most of the shit melee skills have strictly better versions at this point or are glorified auto attack. GGG could straight up remove cleave from the game and nothing of value would be lost because reave is just better.

Not for me. Reave asks you to rush between packs to keep better AoE, I hate that. Any skill that forces you to rush packs for it to work is a shit skill for me.

Cleave has 26 radius and reave has 24 with 0 stacks and it takes like .5s to ramp up to 4.

Somewhat unintuitively, Cleave is actually better for single target than for clear. It's clear is inferior to Reave, but it has ~20% more base damage.

As much of a meme as the Quin69 challenge was, there's a reason several people who completed it switched to Cleave for the actual UElder kill, while using other skills like Tec Slam to level. The skill has a clean animation and does very respectable damage, the AoE is just tiny.

On May 10 2019 16:18 -Archangel- wrote:When you can pick up a random melee skill (like Cleave) and do a build that can do T16/Guardians/Bosses without needing to put 20ex into it and have a specific ascendancy then we can talk about how melee is OK.

Cleave is a bad example for this, seeing as it's actually pretty good for bossing and is a reasonable choice for UElder SSF. It's clear is awful so you don't want to level with it, but it's a perfectly reasonable bossing skill even on an SSF-level of investment.

Though that sort of belies the problem with melee where all the great bossing melee skills have tiny AoE and awful clear, and all the melee skills with good clear scale damage pretty poorly. Whereas with spells, there are plenty of spells now with great clear and high enough damage scaling for bosses also.

On May 10 2019 04:58 EchelonTee wrote:I think at this point, melee in trade league is fine tbh, most gear is cheaper. You can get started with a voidforge or atziri's disfavour that is stupid cheap. Can also try to make the broken synthesis weapons if you want, but it would probably be too hard to trade when flashback comes out

This. The relatively low demand for melee gear largely offsets the inferiority of melee builds on trade leagues. I bought Scaevas for like 1c each on day 2 of Synthesis when in leagues past they've been 15c a few days in. Builds like Cleave, Tec Slam, Reave, etc. all fly through to red maps on dual Scaevas + a 5L, and that's always been true.

On May 10 2019 04:58 EchelonTee wrote:I think at this point, melee in trade league is fine tbh, most gear is cheaper. You can get started with a voidforge or atziri's disfavour that is stupid cheap. Can also try to make the broken synthesis weapons if you want, but it would probably be too hard to trade when flashback comes out

This. The relatively low demand for melee gear largely offsets the inferiority of melee builds on trade leagues. I bought Scaevas for like 1c each on day 2 of Synthesis when in leagues past they've been 15c a few days in. Builds like Cleave, Tec Slam, Reave, etc. all fly through to red maps on dual Scaevas + a 5L, and that's always been true.

That has not been my experience few leagues ago when I tried to make my starting character a crit cyclone or cleave 2x scaeva Jugger. Character had problems with dps and survivability (mostly due to not killing stuff fast enough while being too close to them).

For casters you can just get Tabula and slot 20 different caster or summon skills and you are good until guardians.

I'm not the fastest but I am going to try for a relatively quick 100 this flashback, as HOWA jugg. What I'd like opinions on is, think I should kill uber elder for the 4th sextant or just go 3 sextants and shape a t14, 15, and 16 and run which ever one has the best mods at the time? I'm trying to decide if the bit of extra time to lure elder to the middle and all that stuff is worth the 4th sextant when trying to level fast.

if you're in trade league I'd go for 4th sextant. it's just currency needed to buy the maps to lure the elder in. If elder is dicking around in white maps, fully clear his influence and just do high tier maps until he spawns near center.

On May 16 2019 06:55 clusen wrote:I have to say:the thing that feels the worst about melee is leap slam, and that in this shit league

You have to get used to leap slam, or weapon swap for it for sure. Its the Need to leap slam that gets me, though phase run could probably do well in a lot of circumstances.

I really feel like they should add a bunch more mobility options or buff ones like blink arrow. They have a lot of good ones to be fair, but it feels like outside of shield charge there's not really many middle investment mobility options that you can take.

Flame Dash/Leap Slam/Phase Run seem like good 'low investment' options, and you have things like Consecrated Path, Flicker Strike, Lightning Warp, if you want a really high investment mobility option, but there's really not much between those two sides and most of them don't bypass impassable terrain.

Like just doing an unscientific look at poe.ninja's builds you have 74% running Flame Dash, 10% running shield charge, and 7% running leap slam. But that doesn't account for builds running both and Flame Dash + Shield Charge seems reasonably frequent. (37% phase run, but a lot of builds run phase run with something else).

It'd be interesting to see what would happen to builds if you nerfed Immortal Call (or gave alternatives) and had more options for movement abilities.

note he only did 10 runs per map, but it's a useful reference anyways. looks like burial chambers is ~8% more mobs, (567 port > 612 burial), but I guess it would depend on which is better with sextants / relevant flashback mods

That's interesting, because burial chambers is smaller I'm pretty sure. Port sometimes feels like it has a lot of empty space. Card wise I think port is better because lucky connections isn't bad, and saint's treasure is probably about as good as doctor if accounting for drop rate.

After trying it out I will say this. I like the density of burials, and I like the layout more than port, but the spot on the atlas makes it much harder to maintain an elder blob, so I went back to t16 ports.